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Updated: May 25, 2025
This new document created a corporation of forty patentees who, sitting in council as directors of their enterprise, were known as the Council for New England. The president of this council was King James's unpopular favourite the Duke of Buckingham, and its most prominent members were the earls of Pembroke and Lenox, Sir Ferdinando Gorges, and Shakespeare's friend the Earl of Southampton.
The patent then goes on to provide for a royalty to His Majesty of one-fifth of the net profits, to exempt the patentees from custom duty, to exclude competition, and to exhort good subjects of the Crown to help the Cabots in every possible way.
Since the first patent was published, important improvements have been made in France, Germany, and America, which the original patentees have incorporated. Copperplates cast from wood cuts and stereotypes can be reproduced with great facility and economy, and the exact touches of an artist in clay or wax can be reproduced in metal without the translation of casting.
If this matter is much longer neglected, private corporations will have unrestricted control of one of the elements of life and the patentees of the arid lands will be tenants at will of the water companies.
One might almost call them patented human beings patentees of spiritual discoveries, or of aspects of humanity, whose patents can never be infringed for all our cleverness. Said Tennyson, in bitter answer to criticism that began to depreciate him because of the glibness of his imitators: All can grow the flower now, For all have got the seed.
Wheatstone and Cooke proposed to join forces with the Morse patentees in America, but this proposition was rejected, although Morse seems to have been almost tempted, for in a letter to Smith he says: "I send you copies of two letters just received from England. What shall I say in answer? Can we make any arrangements with them? Need we do it?
The effect of this monopoly was of course that the metal employed in the manufacture was adulterated, to the great loss of the public. But this was a trifle. The patentees were armed with powers as great as have ever been given to farmers of the revenue in the worst governed countries.
The king had no direct relation with their proceedings, beyond the general and vague claims of royal prerogative; and it was an open question whether Parliament had the power to override the authority of the patentees.
Steele's argument against the government brought on him the hostility of the Duke of Newcastle, then Lord Chamberlain; and it was partly to defend himself and his brother patentees against hostile action threatened by the Duke, that Steele, in January, 1720, started his paper called the 'Theatre'. But he was dispossessed of his government of the theatre, to which a salary of L600 a-year had been attached, and suffered by the persecution of the court until Walpole's return to power.
And though another patent was issued, it contained reservations to protect "the rights, privileges, and properties of the inhabitants." But their joy was tempered by a provision giving the patentees the quit rents with eleven years arrears. This would be more than the entire value of many men's estates, it was complained. So they employed agents to plead their cause in London.
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